Chief Executive Officer Gordon Sanghera spent some time telling me how the technology could tag proteins or microRNA with specially-made DNA strands and be used for detection, but he wouldn’t say a word about the company’s timeline for DNA sequencing. Instead, he urged patience. “What we said at AGBT, we will make good.”

I thought they said beta units would be out by September or October and they'd go on sale in December. It'd be a lot easier to be patient if they spared us the dog and pony show and just delivered.